Kerry says US wants to negotiate with Assad… State Dept denies

The US secretary of state appeared to say on CBS News that America has to negotiate with Syria’s president about a political transition in the war-torn country. But later the State Department clarified that John Kerry wasn’t referring to Bashar Assad.

"But to get the
Assad regime to negotiate, we're going to have to make it clear
to him that there is a determination by everybody to seek that
political outcome and change his calculation about
negotiating,” Kerrysaidon Sunday.

Kerry added that the US and some other countries were trying to
restart talks on the resolution of the conflict in Syria, which
has now entered its fifth year.

“Because everybody agrees there is no military solution.
There is only a political solution….and I am convinced that with
the efforts of our allies and others, there will be increased
pressure on Assad,” Kerry said.

However, later US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said
that in his statement Kerry wasn’t referring to the Syrian
president.

“By necessity, there has always been a need for
representatives of the Assad regime to be a part of this process.
It has never been and would not be Assad who would negotiate –
and the secretary was not saying that today,” she said.

Some Western states, particularly the US, have insisted that
Assad should step down. Kerry even said on March 5 that
“military pressure” may be needed to oust the Syrian
president. Kerry’s statement on Sunday, given in an interview to
US media, hints that Washington may be softening its stance
towards the Syrian government.

Kerry was speaking on the fourth anniversary of the start of the
civil war in Syria, which started as peaceful protests against
the Assad government, but descended into violence claiming more
than 210,000 lives. The US has been supporting the Syrian rebels,
who insist that the Syrian president should be ousted. In
January, Russia and the US organized the Geneva-2 peace talks
between Assad’s government and the Syrian opposition. However,
after two rounds of negotiations, no agreement was reached. This
April, Moscow is set to host a meeting between the two sides of
the conflict.

Last September, the US-led coalition started airstrikes in Syria
as a part of a joint effort to battle Islamic State militants
(formerly known as ISIS, or ISIL), who had seized northern Syria
and parts of Iraq. Assad has stressed multiple times that strikes
are an illegal intervention because they have not been authorized
by a UN Security Council resolution and do not respect the
sovereignty of Syria.

Assad told French reporters in December that the
airstrikes are “merely cosmetic” and “terrorism
cannot be destroyed from the air.” He stressed that the
Syrian army has been conducting ground operations as well as
airstrikes against terrorists which are larger than that those
launched by the alliance.

“We are the ones fighting the battles against ISIS on the
ground, and we haven’t felt any change, particularly that Turkey
is still extending direct support to ISIS in those regions,”
he said.

He also criticized the US policy in the Middle East saying that
“ISIS was created in Iraq in 2006. It was the United States
which occupied Iraq, not Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi [IS leader]
was in American prisons, not in Syrian prisons. So, who created
ISIS, Syria or the United States?”

It would be far easier to address the issue of the Islamic State
militants in Syria if the opposition and the government
negotiated a ceasefire, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura told RT on
March 6.

“So if one wants to address properly the space which Daesh
[an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group] has filled in,
one of the clear formulas is to try to address in a peaceful way
the political process in Syria. In other words, if Syrian
conflict would end tomorrow, it would by far easier to address
the issue of Daesh.”

He also said that the Syrian people themselves should decide upon
their future and start an internal discussion. He added that the
governments, who have “an influence, who have been involved,
engaged with the government or with the opposition” should
be helping in facilitating the Syrian peace dialogue.

“That is why I think the Moscow meeting has been very useful.
And I’m looking forward to seeing Moscow-2 too, because it helps
in engaging Syrians – among [them] the Syrian people, the
opposition and even the government. They need to find a Syrian
solution.”